


will you be my breath (through the deep deep water)

by TheLadyoftheHouse



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Daydreaming, F/M, Fluff, Force Bond (Star Wars), Jedi Ben Solo, Kylo Swims Because He’s Anxious, Light Angst, Mention of pregnancy, Post-TLJ, Reylo - Freeform, Reylo Baby, Senator Ben Solo, Smuggler Ben Solo, They Were Always Going to End Up Together, ignoring TROS, what-if scenarios
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-15
Updated: 2020-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:53:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23158111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLadyoftheHouse/pseuds/TheLadyoftheHouse
Summary: There had been lakes on Chandrila when Ben Solo was a child. His mother had taught him to swim in their silver waters. They had tarnished and dulled on the day that he left forever.Kylo Ren does not swim for the pleasure of it. He swims to fill his mind with something other than...her. And it works. For a while.Today, he cannot stop the thoughts that circle his head.What if I had chosen differently?
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 22
Kudos: 216
Collections: Ijustfellintothissendhelp, Reylo Hidden Gems





	will you be my breath (through the deep deep water)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Killtheselights](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Killtheselights/gifts).



> Here is my entry for the Reylo Charity Anthology Vol. 2! A humongous thank you to all who contributed, to the fabulous mods, to those who donated, and to my dearest Vee for being a most excellent beta-reader and cheerleader.
> 
> Title comes from American Authors and their gorgeous song “Deep Water”.
> 
> Enjoy!

A massive hand slices silently into the black water. 

Stroke. 

Its twin follows a moment later, fingers pulled tight together cutting like a blade. 

Stroke. 

Again. 

Stroke. 

Again. 

Stroke. 

Black hair plastered to pale skin, a wide mouth tips up to gulp in a breath before the head submerges. 

Stroke. 

Again. 

Move. 

Again. 

Silence. 

There had been lakes on Chandrila when Ben Solo was a child. Fresh, crystal-green waters tucked into valleys and spread out in fields of swaying wildflowers. His mother had taught him to swim. Her hands had been cool as the lake water, spanning his little back as she helped him float, his face upturned to the clear skies cresting the mountains. Play-bruised legs kicked steadily under her watchful eye, paddling through the calm, glass-like surface. Lungs learned to expand and hold as he explored the life teeming below the surface, cutting silently through schools of little silver fish, watching how the dragonflies slipped across the lake’s face with daring grace, crouching impossibly still to let a curious fish nibble at his toes. Her clear voice correcting his gangly preteen body, reminding him to  _ think long breathe with purpose keep your shoulders loose. _

The lakes looked like tarnished silver on the day that Ben Solo left home for the last time. 

There had been ponds at the temple. They were never quite the same as the silky texture of Chandrila’s lakes. The water there had been soft on his skin. The water here made his skin feel too tight as it dried. The ponds were clogged with amphibians that the younglings liked to try to catch. The ponds were small; too small and shallow to _really_ swim across. The ponds would not give him the sweet sting in his antsy muscles that he sought. The ponds would not bring his screaming mind to silence as the lakes had. 

The ponds turned red on the day that Ben Solo died. 

But the water never truly left the man who remained. 

Kylo Ren had fallen out of the habit of swimming regularly after joining up with the First Order. His master had encouraged more aggressive means of exercise, in any case, and swimming reminded him too much of the life he had left behind. He didn’t miss it, he told himself as his fellow Knights beat at him with their blades and staves. He didn’t need the silent heartbeat of the water pressing in on his ears, the way even his massive body could experience weightlessness, the meditation of repetition. The calm. Kylo Ren didn’t need the water. He needed rage, power, strength. 

But then Starkiller happened. Then the Supremacy happened. Then Crait happened. 

Then  _ she  _ happened. 

Your priorities tend to shift when a star reaches out to touch your hand. 

If Kylo Ren could be thankful for anything in his new role as Supreme Leader of the First Order, it was that he now had unencumbered access to a private pool. The water was warm, slightly salinated, and deeper than he expected, sunk into a black crater in a black room with a massive shuttered viewport. It was meant to be a sensory deprivation chamber, simulating the soundless vacuum of space to aid meditation. Kylo unshuttered the viewport, opening the room to faint starlight. He outfitted one end of the pool with a motor that created an artificial current. He could swim into it endlessly, never needing to focus on turning, never needing to mind where the shallows or walls were, never needing to stop until his arms and legs and lungs were howling with exhaustion. 

He found himself in that pool nearly every night. It was the only way he could get to sleep, the only thing that kept his failings, his losses, his weak Solo heart, from his mind. He didn’t have to think in the water. He just had to move. 

Stroke. 

Again.

Calm. 

Again. 

Think long. 

Again. 

Stroke. 

Again. 

Shoulders loose. 

Again. 

Stroke. 

Again. 

_ Breathe with purpose, Ben. _ __

Kylo explodes up from the pool with a wild snarl that devolves into an anguished howl, the sound hollowing out into the vacuum of the room. The current gushes on as he swallows lungful after lungful of vaguely salty air. His feet scrape the bottom of the pool as he stalks to the motor and shuts it off, panting, chest heaving. The last of the bubbles dissipate out around him, clinging to the ridges of his abdomen. His arms tremble as he leans on the lip of the pool, trying to regain his breath. 

He’d had a bad day. Not that many of his days are particularly good. But today had been particularly wretched. 

He’d seen _her_ again. 

Up until this morning, he had managed to successfully avoid every image of her, any mention of her, and all temptation to try the mysterious connection between them. 

He hadn’t gone swimming the night before, thinking himself exhausted enough from meetings and paperwork to sleep without incident. And he had been right. 

Until he awoke earlier than usual with her, curled up and sleeping, in his bed next to him. 

Her slender shoulders had risen and fallen in gentle snores. Her hair, longer now than it had been on the _Supremacy_ but just as soft-looking, had tumbled over her pillow. He could _feel_ her, practically reach out and touch her, a small sun in his bed, all warmth and beauty and softness and light and _Rey_ and…

Everything he could never have. Everything he could never be. 

He’d closed the connection before he did anything he regretted. 

And instantly regretted it. 

He had torn a training room to pieces, put two of his Knights in the infirmary, beat his own knuckles raw, and still he couldn’t shake the almost-feeling of her under his fingertips. 

He slicks his wet hair back from his eyes, wiping a large hand down his face. His heart pounds. His muscles scream. It isn’t enough. Why isn’t it enough?

Why is he not enough?

He squeezes his eyes shut against the intruding thought, automatically shoving it down where his Master can’t—no...wait. 

His eyes open again slowly. 

The only voice in his head is his own. The tension in his body releases by a fraction. There is no one there to punish him for his traitorous thoughts. A wheezing bark of a laugh, utterly humorless, breaks out of his lungs.

How did it ever come to this? When did having his own thoughts become a radical act of rebellion?

He exhales shakily and pushes back from the wall, treading back out into the center of the pool. He knows the answers to these questions. 

The nightmares had always been there. Not a night passed when he wasn’t tormented by shadow men and monsters that no child’s imagination should ever conjure. The darkness had always been there. The Dark side had always been there. The Light side had been a more capricious visitor. 

...but what if it hadn’t been?

The idea slips through his mind with alarming clarity. Crystalline and bright. 

What if the Dark hadn’t always been there?

What if he had chosen differently?

His heart clenches painfully and forces him to take another shuddering breath. No good ever came of this line of thinking when his master had been alive, and the conditioned urge to stomp it out is strong in his mind. Instead, he swallows his panic and the bile it brings with it and allows the thoughts to pass through him as he floats onto his back. 

The weightlessness helps, he thinks. It lets him forget his too-big body and its many failings. Its many scars. His right eye tics, the line of scar tissue beneath it tugs. 

He lets himself drift, starlight from light years away softly illuminating the room and the man within it. 

What if he had been Light?

_ “Senator Solo!” the page’s voice calls. “Senator Solo, a moment please!” _

_ Ben looks up from his datapad, a proposal for a new workers’ rights bill slowly taking shape. He turns to face the young Nikto barreling toward him. He chuckles.  _

_ “How can I help you, Klen?” he asks patiently. The page is notoriously excitable and takes his job (little though it is) very seriously. Klen reminds the senator of himself not too long ago. Young, hungry, eager to make change.  _

_ Klen is bowed over, his hands on his knees. “There’s...there’s a—hah, one second, sir, let me catch…my breath…” _

_ “Take your time, I can wait.” _

_ The Nikto pushes through a few gulping breaths before rising with a grateful nod.  _

_ “You’ve got a visitor, sir, in your office,” he says.  _

_ Ben huffs a little chuckle. “Do I get a hint as to their identity or should I guess?” _

_ Klen laughs as well, eased by the senator’s humor. “She didn’t give a name, but she mentioned being a beneficiary of your free water initiative in the Western Reaches. Jakku, I think?” _

_ Ben’s eyebrows creep up his forehead and he checks the schedule readout on his datapad. He has a few more meetings, but not until later, then his weekly dinner with his mother. He’ll have to work on the workers’ rights proposal late tonight if he wants to get it ready for session at the end of the week.  _

_ “Thank you, Klen, I’ll head over right now,” he says, already walking. “Keep up the good work.” _

_ “Thank you, sir!”  _

_ On the turbolift up to his offices in the Chandrilan embassy on the fifth floor, Ben racks his brain and his files, trying to piece together an idea of his mystery guest.  _

_ The free water initiative on Jakku had been one of his first victories as a newly appointed senator. He still remembers his first time seeing the holos of sandblasted outposts and dehydrated desert dwellers scavenging just to survive. Up until the Senate stepped in, local bosses had been using water and food as currency, forcing their underlings to trade valuable scrap for measly returns if they wanted to eat. He had grown up with stories of his grandfather’s childhood as a slave on a desert planet, had thought how lucky his Uncle Luke’s formative years had been to have grown up on a moisture farm. How lucky for him, but how rare for countless others. Newly-minted Senator Solo, young and hungry and itching to do good in the galaxy, had decided that this would be his first crusade.  _

_ The turbolift pings, rousing him from his reverie and he strides out into the Chandrilan embassy, giving a nod and a smile to Melya at the front desk as he passes. His long coat billows out behind him, his long legs make short work of the hallway leading to his office.  _

_ The door is cracked open. He slows.  _

_ A peek of sun-kissed shoulder and dark brown hair catches his eye. He takes a quick breath and enters. _

_ “Sorry to keep you waiting,” he says, moving toward his desk to set down his datapad. _

_ His visitor jumps a fraction and whips her head around to meet his gaze. _

_ His heart stumbles inexplicably and he finds himself frozen.  _

_ Wide hazel eyes sit atop high cheekbones dusted with constellations of freckles. A sweet mouth breaks into a dazzling smile that forces Ben to actively focus on breathing properly. _

_ She is lovely. Utterly lovely.  _

_ Every elegant turn of phrase and intelligent conversation starter and every last one of his nearly twenty years of education and experience as a diplomat and professional smooth-talker go flying out the window.  _

_ She is familiar in a way that he can’t quite place. Looking into her eyes, he feels as though he has already known her for an eternity. He doesn’t even know her name. _

_ She rises from her seat, a lithe willow-branch of a woman dressed in sandy colors and light fabrics, and turns more fully to face him. The thought strikes him that she is the perfect size to fit in his arms, to tuck under his chin, to kiss her hair… _

_ “Senator Solo?” she asks, her voice soft and low and musical. _

_ He swallows and nods dumbly.  _

_ Her smile widens.  _

_ “I can’t believe I’m actually meeting you. In person,” she says, excitement lacing her words with sunshine. “You have no idea how much this means to me. Your work on Jakku, to bring us free water, you...well, I don’t know how else to say it: you saved my life.” _

_ She steps fractionally closer. She smells like clean air and earth and green things and endless blue skies. He is entranced as she looks up at him with eyes as bright as stars.  _

_ “If it hadn’t been for your work, I would still be scavenging ship parts in the Goazon badlands and starving for it. But I got out. And now I’m working with an activist group to continue bringing justice and free water to other places that need it.” _

_ A pretty flush stains her cheeks and Ben thinks he might be in love.  _

_ “Anyway, I wanted to come here to thank you, Senator Solo. For everything.” _

_ It occurs to him that he has been staring dumbly at her this entire time.  _

_ “Ben,” he croaks. _

_ The woman’s brow crinkles. “Sorry?” _

_ He clears his throat, but it doesn’t do much to alleviate the desert in his mouth.  _

_ “Call me Ben.” _

_ Her expression softens into something curious and a dimple appears on her right cheek where the corner of her sweet mouth tugs up into a little smile. She offers her hand to shake.  _

_ “I’m Rey,” she murmurs.  _

_ It’s an old Chandrilan custom, hardly ever used except for highly formal settings, but suddenly Ben is compelled to pay homage to the past. He slips his hand under hers, small and callused and warm, and bows over it, lifting her knuckles to his lips. It’s merely the briefest brush of skin against skin, but the spark that catches between them sets something on fire in his chest. He thinks he hears a soft gasp escape from her. His eyes turn up to hers. She looks at him like she sees the future in his face. He thinks he can see his in hers as well.  _

_ “It is a pleasure to meet you, Rey,” he says, and never in his politician’s life has he been more sincere.  _

Kylo jerks out of the vision with a splash. Her again.

Can he have no peace from her? Even in his own imaginings?

He wades to the edge of the pool, crossing his arms over the side and propping his chin up to gaze out at the stars beyond the viewport. She’s out there somewhere, cursing his name and the loathsome connection between them that neither of them can break. 

She hates him. He knows it instinctively.

Then why does his mind insist on showing him that she loves him?

Delusion. A beautiful lie that can only exist in dreams. How could someone like her ever tie herself to a monster like him? 

Surely there is more to the Light than the scavenger. 

He exhales harshly through his nose, as if to breathe her phantom scent out of his lungs. He lets his vision unfocus, the stars doubling before his eyes, filling the galaxy to the brim with possibilities.

_ His lightsaber thrums smoothly in his palm, calm slipping through his blood as he takes his stance on the temple training grounds. He likes getting up early to train. The younglings and Padawans aren’t awake yet and the rising sun on his face feels like an old friend. Dew clings to the toes of his boots from his crossing over the grass to the stone training circle. He takes a deep breath in through his nose and pushes it back out with a quiet sigh. The world smells fresh, renewed, clean.  _

_ He closes his eyes.  _

_ His blade ignites.  _

_ He moves.  _

_ Each stance is slow, meditative, and deliberate. Really, this sequence is more decorative than practical in terms of combat; in fact it’s archaic and would likely get him killed on a battlefield if he tried to use it. Thankfully, things have been much more peaceful since the fall of Snoke and his Knights of Ren.  _

_ He breathes the intrusive thought out of his mind, flowing and spinning through another set. He is among the only remaining beings in the galaxy who remembers this ancient form, let alone practices it. Uncle Luke is already looking for high-achieving students with a mind for historical conservation to learn from Ben.  _

_ “Keep our history alive,” Luke had said. “Pass on your knowledge.” _

_ Ben crouches low, spinning on the balls of his feet, the soles of his boots scraping loudly against the old stone, and his lightsaber sings in a circle around him. He rises fluidly and the sequence repeats, faster.  _

_ He doesn’t need to see to perform this form, so ingrained it is in his muscles and bones. It’s lithe, acrobatic, graceful, more dance than combat. It utilizes the length of his arms, relies on the strength of his legs, excels with the speed of his footwork. Often he feels as if this form was made for him.  _

_ In a way, it almost was.  _

_ Ben’s grandfather had been a practitioner.  _

_ Anakin Skywalker’s spirit had been one of his most grueling tutors when Ben was a boy at the temple.  _

_ “It’s fine on its own, beautiful even,” his grandfather had said upon his grandson’s mastery over the style. “But really it benefits most from a partner.” _

_ He feels his blade make contact with another as he brings it down in front of him. The impact shudders up through his arms. _

_ The Force seems to chuckle.  _

_ Partner.  _

_ His eyes snap open and his face splits into a grin.  _

_ A blade the color of the sky at twilight hums in the slender hands of his partner.  _

_ Rey.  _

_ Her returning smile is brighter than the rising sun. She slips into the mirror of his form, meeting him move for move. Their blades glance off each other with well-practiced symmetry and elegance. She spins low as he strikes high, her loose hair flaring out in a wave of gold-kissed brown. It always takes his breath away to watch her flow through the forms he taught her. He knows the sequence well enough to perform it in his sleep, but could never close his eyes on the sight of his partner dancing.  _

_ They move as one soul, as they had on the battlefield, cutting down enemies in black and red. He remembers it still with aching clarity; the warmth and power of her slender body pressed to his back, the two of them the eye of a deadly storm of blue blades.  _

_ At first, he and Rey had had their differences, both too independent to imagine a partnership between them working successfully. And yet, after a while, they had found their balance. He had strength, reach, power. She had flexibility, speed, focus. One filled in the spots that the other could not, in battle and in peace.  _

_ The dance ends with flourishes on both sides, the sounds of their breath filling the warm morning air.  _

_ Lightsabers disengage in tandem. He walks forward and wraps his arms around her waist, pressing a kiss to the soft skin beneath her ear. She melts into him with a happy sigh and her hands come up to stroke over his shoulders.  _

_ “You’re up early,” he rumbles into her neck.  _

_ “I missed you,” she replies, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.  _

_ His arms tighten around her, the thrum of the Force around them and between them harmonizing sweetly.  _

_ “Good practice?” she asks, her fingers carding through his hair.  _

_ “Mm-hm,” he hums lazily as his lips trace the curve of her shoulder. His muscles are loose and warm and it’s so easy to mold himself around the shape of her body. Her embrace feels like home.  _

_ “Sleep well?” _

_ “Mm-hm.” _

_ He can feel her smile against the side of his head. “Any chance of answers made of actual words?” _

_ He shakes his head, nuzzling deeper into her neck.  _

_ “Mm-mm.” _

_ She laughs sweetly and her fingers drift down to gently knead at his shoulders. His answering groan is nigh indecent, but her touch is intoxicating. Kisses trail up the elegant slope of her neck, coaxing a soft moan from her throat. He straightens, his eyes intent on her face, sun-gilt and freckled and beautiful. Rey returns his gaze with unabashed hunger. He leans down to her with aching slowness. _

_ “Y’know, ‘attachments are no longer forbidden’ isn’t an invitation to neck on the training grounds.” _

_ Luke’s voice is gruff but amused. Rey’s forehead meets Ben’s shoulder with a mortified giggle. She peeks around his arm at the older man. _

_ “Sorry, Master Luke,” she says, the very image of contrition even though she hasn’t moved to remove herself from the arms of her partner. _

_ “No you’re not,” Luke calls over his shoulder as he walks away. “Come on, Master Rey, your classes can’t start without you.” _

_ She sighs and disentangles herself, sneaking a little peck on the underside of his jaw before moving to follow the older man.  _

_ Ben watches her walk off, her steps light on the grass, as if her every footfall is calculated to cause as little damage to the plants as possible. She seems to float through her existence with ease and beauty, while he plods just behind, watching her as if she hung the moons in the night sky. She walks in the footsteps of the universe and he loves her for it. _

_ Before she goes too far, she turns, a luminous smile gracing her face just as the sun’s beams caress her cheek. He has to take a deep breath to make up for the one she has just stolen.  _

_ She extends a slender hand out to him. _

_ “Coming?”  _

_ Peace floods his veins. He wonders if he has ever been so happy. _

_ He reaches out to take it, his fingers just brushing hers. _

He can still feel her strength in his arms and her softness on his lips when the stars come back into focus.

With some difficulty, Kylo swallows the tightness that has found its way into his throat. He squeezes his eyes shut, pressing his fingers to his eyelids until he sees multicolored spots in the darkness. 

“Get out of my head, shade,” he growls to the tepid air, but there are no teeth behind his words.

She must be doing this to him. Who else could make him so weak? Who else but her could so thoroughly unnerve him? 

But the hollow soundlessness that heralds the bond’s activity does not ring in his ears. He is alone with his thoughts. She is not to blame for his weakness. 

In truth, she has never been a weakness to him. 

She had been his strength in the blood red throne room. He had slain his master under the watch of her sparkling hazel eye. He had slaughtered the Praetorian guard with her wild rage at his back. He had done it for her. 

And she had left. 

But she had left her mark, indelible upon his soul. 

She is like a scar that never seems to fade, no matter the stretch of time from the wounding. She twinges at him when he is too awake, too idle, too alone. She is a thickening of tissue in the pit of his stomach, a constant weight that he carries with him. 

He wishes he could be free of this ballast, free from her unrelenting presence. 

And yet, instinctively he knows that to be unmoored from her would be unbearable. He would be lost and drifting without her light. He knows this, deep inside him. 

He does not deserve her, yet he cannot let her go. 

Kylo takes a deep breath, filling his lungs and expanding his chest, and slips beneath the surface, his eyes falling closed. 

One more dream. One more impossible future. And he will let her go. 

_ The water is quiet and calm and silver. Just as it had been all those years ago. A fish brushes past his leg. He is seated on the bottom of the lake, tiny pearls of air sneaking up over his face and catching in his hair. The ecosystem around him thrums with life and peaceful energy. It permeates the current, the sand, his skin. He is alive with a thousand other creatures here. He is not alone.  _

_ Little arms twine around his neck, cool from the lake water. A small body presses tight to his back. He explodes up from the water with a gulp of air, splashing and roaring like a massive sea monster. His hanger-on squeals in delight.  _

_ “Daddy!” she shrieks.  _

_ He reaches around his back to pull her into his arms. Her smile is missing teeth, her eyes are soft brown, the summer sun has kissed even more freckles onto her round cheeks. He peppers her face with kisses of his own and grins as she giggles and squirms. Her little hands flex and curl on his shoulders.  _

_ “Did you swim all the way out here by yourself, sweetheart?” he asks.  _

_ She nods emphatically. “Uh-huh!” _

_ He sees her eyes dart over his shoulder at the shore and manages to hide his grin. He knows this game.  _

_ “Really?” he exclaims. “You swam so far! And without any help at all!” _

_ She giggles and nods again. Her water-darkened hair frizzes around the edges as it dries, catching the sunlight in the wayward strands and haloing her head. His little angel.  _

_ He sways back and forth with her in his arms, purposefully keeping his back to the shore.  _

_ “I’m so proud of you, sweetheart,” he coos, albeit loudly. “Let’s go back in and tell your mother all ab—“ _

_ Another body collides with his back. Strong and slender arms band about his waist, creating goosebumps on his abdomen. He yelps theatrically, pulling a face for his star-eyed girl’s amusement.  _

_ The little one shrieks with glee.  _

_ “We fooled him, Mommy!” she giggles, clapping her hands delightedly. “We fooled him!” _

_ A laugh gusts cool air against his back.  _

_ “We sure did, sunshine,” the barnacle chuckles. “Didn’t we, love?” _

_ Ben shifts his daughter to one arm so he can look under his other at the face of his wife. She’s beaming, little droplets of water clinging like jewels to her eyelashes and making her freckles glimmer golden in the fading sunlight. He grins down at her.  _

_ “You took my breath away,” he murmurs, just for her.  _

_ Her smile softens and she sneaks a kiss against the nearest patch of his skin before wading around him to nibble at the little fingers reaching for her face.  _

_ “There’s my little fish,” Rey coos with a smile. “She really did swim most of the way out here by herself.” _

_ “Just like Grandma and I taught her,” he answers proudly, hefting the slight weight of their daughter higher into his grip.  _

_ Ben squeezes her tightly for a moment, praying that she will always have time for her father when she no longer fits so comfortably in his arms.  _

_ “Why don’t you go show Grandma and Papa how fast you can swim? And then maybe later Uncle Chewie will help you build a sand castle.” _

_ She nods emphatically. “Okay, Daddy!”  _

_ Then her face becomes abruptly imperious and aloof, a look that she likely picked up from her grandmother.  _

_ “You may put me down now,” she says very seriously. “Please,” she adds hastily.  _

_ Rey stifles a snicker, turning her face against Ben’s upper arm. He has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing himself.  _

_ “As you command, Your Highness,” he replies and bows deeply until her back touches the water. Then he drops her.  _

_ “Dad-dy,” she whines, shaking her head like a wet Wookiee. Were she on land, he knows that her tiny fists would be planted firmly on her hips in disapproval, a stance she inherited from her mother.  _

_ He shrugs. “You said to put you down, sweetheart, you never said it had to be on your feet.” _

_ At this point, Rey is trembling with repressed laughter. She has to take a few deep breaths before she comes around her husband to nudge her daughter forward.  _

_ “Go on, sunshine, we’ll be right behind you if you get tired,” she says.  _

_ He eyes Rey appreciatively. They both know she won’t back down from the implied challenge.  _

_ “I won’t get tired! Watch me, watch me!”  _

_ And with that, she’s off, kicking furiously back toward the shore, her arms slapping the water’s surface with each stroke.  _

_ Leia cheers her granddaughter on from the beach. Han is snoring lightly in his chair. Chewie is lurking by the waterline, waiting to pounce on his grand-niece as soon as she gets close enough.  _

_ “I’m glad you and Han made it back from the job in time for this,” she murmurs. “We’ve missed you. And you both work too hard.” _

_ Rey’s arm slips around his waist. Ben tucks her close and presses a kiss to the top of her head.  _

_ “I’m glad, too. Two months was too long away from my girls.” _

_ She is nestled into the circle of his arms, grinning at the roar and squeals of their daughter and her favorite great-uncle. Chewie towers over her little body even as they sit side by side and form the slushy sand into domes. She smiles and its brightness pierces Ben’s heart.  _

_ “She looks just like you, you know,” he says softly after a moment.  _

_ Rey hums in agreement. “Even down to the freckles.” _

_ “And the stubbornness.” _

_ She nudges him lazily with her shoulder.  _

_ “I hope the next one looks like you,” she murmurs.  _

_ “What, with my big ears and this nose? I wouldn’t wish it on any—“  _

_ Then it hits him. He looks down at her, notched perfectly into him like a puzzle piece. She’s looking up at him with a serene smile and shining eyes.  _

_ “...the next one?” His voice is tiny, fragile. His heart is pounding.  _

_ She nods.  _

_ His chest bursts. He sweeps her up into his embrace, raining damp kisses over her face before finally stopping at her lips. She sighs into the kiss, her hands coming up to his shoulders.  _

_ When he finally has to pull away from her, he presses their foreheads together and closes his eyes. He feels the life and energy of the galaxy flowing through them, through their family, through this moment. Ben is overwhelmed by the joy he feels.  _

_ The world around them is quiet and still.  _

_ “I love you so much,” he says.  _

_ He feels her smile. “Ben…” _

“...en...”

_ The sound is far away, as if deep underwater. _ __

“...Ben…”

_ He pulls back, searching for the source of his name.  _

_ “Ben?” _

“...Ben,”  _ the phantom echoes.  _

_ “Do you hear that?” _

_ Her brow creases. “Hear what?” _

“Ben…wake…up…”

_ “What’s wrong?” _

_ His gaze flies to Rey’s face, then to the shore, eyes frantic for his daughter though he can’t quite figure out why he’s so scared. _ __

“Wake...up.”

_ “No,” he whimpers, his fingers tight around his wife’s waist. “Please…” _

_ “Ben?”  _

_ Her hazel eyes are wide and worried and she’s so lovely so good so alive he doesn’t want to leave her he can’t leave her his baby girl his unborn child his Rey his family he can’t leave he can’t... _

“BEN!”

Kylo’s eyes snap open under dark water. 

Rey’s face, ghostly and glowing in the watery light, stares back at him. 

The air leaves him in an explosion of molten silver bubbles. He bursts up through the surface of the pool, gasping, panting, half sobbing. He wades to the edge of the pool, coughing roughly, ears ringing. He presses his hands to the wall, his unfocused eyes darting across the stars just outside of the viewport, trying to find patterns in the patternless void.

It couldn’t have been her. It’s just the nature of the room; the low light and the lack of ambient sound sending his imagination reeling. 

His heart hammers in his chest and he can almost imagine that he still feels the touch of his dream pressed into his skin. He wants to weep for the loss of it all. He wants to sink back into the stilling water and let it consume him, if only so he could return to that life where he was whole and happy and hers. 

The quiet ripple of moving water burbles behind him, but he hasn’t moved. He is not alone. His heart in his throat, he turns.

Her back is to him. Hands, graceful and callused and warm—he remembers with a pang—smooth water-darkened hair back from a freckled face that he has failed to convince himself not to fall in love with for these past long months.

She turns to look at him, looking every inch a nymph in the reflected starlight off the pool. Kylo thinks he has stopped breathing. 

Rey is here. 

Her bare shoulders just barely peek out of the water, atolls in a calm sea. He can see her breathing from his spot on the opposite side. Droplets cling to her earlobes like diamonds and coat her long lashes. 

In spite of her desert upbringing, she is breathtaking in the water. 

His mouth is hanging open a bit, trying to find words, _anything_ to say to make her stay here with him. Still and beautiful and just out of reach. 

“You were drowning,” she says, her voice quiet and clear in the quiet room. 

“What?” he croaks. 

She tucks a lock of wet hair behind her ear. 

“You were...you were at the bottom, just sitting there. I thought you were drowning.”

_I was,_ he wants to say. _I was drowning but not in the water. I was drowning in you and it was a joy to do so._

“...why?” he rasps. 

She shrugs, creating miniature tides around the island of her. Her face is carefully blank and she can’t quite meet his eyes. 

“I still haven’t figured out the extent of this bond-thing,” she says quickly, flippantly. “For all I know, I could’ve just dropped dead standing in my quarters from  _ you  _ drowning half a galaxy away.”

Her eyes flick up to his face, a flash of heat lightning. 

“This was purely an act of self-preservation, I assure you.” She looks away again, her cheeks darkening in the starlight. 

“Stop lying.” The words just slip out, low and harsh, before he can stop them. 

Why should he care if she’s lying to him? Why does it burn him so to think that she had acted in her own self-interest when it is all he has ever done? Why does her rejection still hurt so much?

The water curls softly around his torso and he can almost imagine that he still feels his Rey’s—his  _ wife’s _ _ — _ ghostly arms wrapped around his waist. 

Her eyes, shifting like the sands of her homeworld, catch on his again. 

“What?” she murmurs, a faint whisper. 

He edges toward her, suddenly bold. She’s here, really here, and not at the same time. Not a vision, not a shade, not a dream. 

She moves minutely and the ripples she creates fan out to reach him, mingling with his own wake. 

“I said,” he whispers, “stop lying. I can taste it.”

She looks up at him, suddenly so much closer. He wonders if it was a mistake to approach her. But she is like a planet of her own, and her gravity is irresistible. 

“Tell me why you woke me up.”

She shivers, a flicker in the starlight. 

“I didn’t want you to die.”

“You mentioned that. You didn’t want to die as well.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Then what did you mean?”

“I—“

“Stop lying.”

“I’m not!”

“Tell me why you woke me up,” he presses, their proximity shortening with every moment. 

“ _ I couldn’t lose you! _ ” she cries. 

The words are a bolt passing through his heart. He freezes, unable to look away from her. Her cheeks are flushed and her eyes are shining. Her shoulders tremble. 

“I—I couldn’t...couldn’t just let you die. I couldn’t bear to watch the life leave you when I was right there.” She looks away with a bitter, desperate expression. 

“I tried so hard to stop it but...you’re in my  _ soul _ .”

A weak little sob escapes her. 

“And even on the other side of a war, I would not see you parted from me.”

He is speechless. Thunderstruck. His lips part soundlessly and his hands tremble at his sides. He is a statue, a living stone, unable to find words to tell her what he feels.

She looks back at him with a cousin of anger in her eyes. 

“Say something!” she demands with a shaking voice. 

When he cannot, she turns away again, curling her arms around herself. 

“This was a mistake, I need to g—“

Her words die on her lips as his hand comes up to touch her cheek. Rey is warm beneath his water-cooled fingertips. He thinks he can feel a spot of light in each freckle as he draws her closer, his other hand catching her jaw in his palm. Her gaze fixes on his, amber meeting onyx. 

It is the easiest thing in the universe to lean down and brush a tentative kiss across her cheekbone. 

It is far easier still to kiss her back when she presses her lips to his. 

Rey tastes like sunshine and salt and growing things. She tastes like hope and tenderness and those forgotten emotions that he had left behind in his childhood. She tastes like drowning and he is all too happy to let her consume him. 

He cradles her face between his hands as he deepens the kiss. Her fingers curl around his upper arms. Her hair tangles over his knuckles. Her lips are soft, so soft, and he debates if he truly needs air if it means parting from them. 

It’s a joy to finally give in to the rebellious thoughts that haunt him. It’s a thrill to finally learn the shape of her, after only knowing the ghostly outline of her from dreams. It’s a privilege to touch her and be touched by her. 

She pulls back, her expression dazed, her eyes glossy, her mouth petal-pink from his kisses. She gasps when his lips return to her face, memorizing the contours of her cheek, the shell of her ear. 

“This…” she pants, “...you—you’re my...my enemy…”

His mouth skates along her jawbone. 

“I know,” he mumbles into the secret place below her ear. 

Her head falls back, allowing him access to the smooth column of her neck. 

“You’re the—ah—the Supreme...Leader…”

“I know.” The sound reverberates against her pulse point and she whimpers, her hands sliding against his slick shoulders. 

Kylo’s arms close around her waist, tugging her closer and closer to his body. 

_So soft,_ he thinks, wonderingly. _Perfect. Right._

“You’re…a…”

She’s cut off by a moan as he nibbles experimentally at the crook of her neck. He soothes the spot with his tongue, a groan of his own slips out and he squeezes her even tighter in his embrace. 

“I know,” he pants. 

He straightens and takes her face in his hands again, tilting her gaze up to meet his. 

“I know,” he repeats, a low rumble as he brushes another fleeting kiss to her lips. 

“I know all of it. Every title, every cursed name, every epithet. I confess it all.”

She breathes hard, her chest rising and falling rapidly. Her cheeks are flushed. Her eyes are glittering and dark. His thumbs smooth delicately over her cheekbones; he never knew that he was capable of such gentleness. 

“And I would give it all up in a heartbeat, if it meant that I could have you.”

Her lips part in a tiny “o” of shock. He can feel the stumbling of her pulse against his chest. 

“Do you know what I was dreaming of? When you found me at the bottom?”

She shakes her head faintly, awestruck. 

“You, Rey.” He touches his forehead to hers. “You and your extraordinary light. You have touched the darkest corners of my soul. You have changed my dreams. You have tamed my riotous heart.”

He pulls back to look at her and sees that her eyes are shining. 

“You have unmade me, Rey of Jakku,” he whispers. “Without you...stars, without you, I’m nothing.”

Her lips move, a bare breath of sound escaping them. He isn’t sure for a moment that he heard her, but their closeness and the silence of the room seems to reverberate the three whispered words back into him. 

“ _ Not to me. _ ”

He kisses her, soft and slow, a blooming and living thing between them. Her fingers weave into his wet hair and his arms wind around her waist. Then a trickle of thought slips into his mind, a gentle tendril of imagined sound. 

_ To me, you are everything _ _.  _

Kylo wonders for a moment if this is another dream. If this moment, so bright and beautiful and impossible, is another imagined life that could have been his if he had chosen the Light. 

And then, with a shiver, he realizes that he _has_ chosen the Light. He chose Rey. 

Better late than never. 

He gathers her closer to him and they sink below the surface of the pool, enveloped in the warm water. Her hair tickles his cheeks as it wafts up around their heads, strands of black and golden brown flowing together as sinuous as lovers.

They break away, opening their eyes to see each other for a stolen moment before the need for air forces them up. But before they head for the surface, Kylo pauses, Rey’s hand clutched in his. A watery luminosity, for the briefest of flashes, transforms the dark pool into the glorious silver lakes of his childhood. It limns Rey’s face with ethereal light, somehow making her even more beautiful than she had been moments before. She smiles at him, slips her hand free, and surges upwards toward the surface. 

As he breaks through the water, he makes a silent vow that one day,  _ soon _ _ ,  _ he will see her in the waters of his homeworld. He will teach her to swim as the silver lake fish do. He will whisper into her mind the gentle instructions that still ring in his head in his mother’s voice. He will hold her tight to him and tell her every dream and pray that they will one day come to pass. 

He feels lighter than he has ever been as he takes in a deep lungful of vaguely salty air. 

When he opens his eyes again, he is alone in the dark pool. 

Peace overrides the instinctual despair that threatens him.  _ Her  _ peace. It tells him that he is not alone. That he is in her heart. That he will see her soon. 

He closes his eyes and lets a single thought ring out in his head. 

_ Breathe, Ben.  _

**Author's Note:**

> *Blows a kiss to the stars* 
> 
> For Rey and Ben.


End file.
